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Education and widening opportunities
Education policy 1918-43, The significance of the Butler Act 1944, The development of comprehensive education to 1979, The growth and social impact of university education 1918-79
To what extent has educational reform led to widening opportunity 1918-79?
1918-31 Secondary education
- Education prior to 1918 was provided by Local Education - Predominantly middle-class children
Authorities and provision was variable - 1918-44 – education was only compulsory up to age 14
- Education in the interwar years was largely dictated by - In 1940, only 13% of working-class children aged 13+ were
economic conditions and costs in school
- Inadequacies were highlighted in the poor educational - Uneven nature of educational provision – in 1931, only 20%
attainment and skills of many military personnel during the of children in some form of secondary education and many
war would leave at 14
- Grammar schools offered scholarships for the brightest
1918 Education Act students and provided excellent education
- Granted significant responsibilities to educational - However, they were based on wealth as poorer parents
authorities, providing them with funding could not afford them due to fees meaning they were mainly
- Recommended school leaving age of 14 for the middle-class
- County colleges to provide vocational training for school
leavers up to the age of 18, but this didn’t always happen Universities
because of cost - In 1919, the government funded universities
- Divided curriculum between ‘practical instruction’ for less - Became more accessible to the middle-class and women by
able children and ‘advanced construction’ for brighter 1918 leading to a diverse and expansion of educational
children provision
- Centralised school financing - Government-funded teacher-training grants provided good
- Improved school teachers’ salaries and pensions opportunities for bright working-class students as they
- Government hoped it would improve school standards agreed to follow their degree with post graduate training
with a commitment to teaching after
1926 Haddow Committee - Red brick increasingly took on more middle-class and bright
- Recognised the diversity of educational provision in different working-class students funded through grants and offered by
areas LEAs though some were more generous than others
- Abolition of elementary schools and the division into primary - Oxbridge remained the domain of the privileged
and secondary schools at age 11 - Less than 10,000 university students in red bricks
- School leaving age to 15 - Most governments of the 1920s and 1930s considered
- Recommendations were not adopted due to cost university education irrelevant to their overall goals
- 328 authorities meant there was a lack of universality
- Huge class sizes with 60 pupils in some cases 1931-39
- Geddes Axe of 1926 meant financial constraints limited their - 1930s – only 1.7% of 18-year-olds went to university
success
- Educational reform was not a priority
- Issues with gender authority
, To what extent has educational reform led to widening opportunity 1918-79?
1939-45
- WW2 led to a recognition of the variance in the provision Tripartite system
and quality of education - Grammar schools
- These inequalities were key in reinforcing the class system – o Based on academic ability as entrants had to pass the
limited opportunities for the working-class meant they were 11+ exam
trapped in cycles of poverty o Provided greater opportunities for many working-class
children
Beveridge Report, 1942 o Critics argued it was impossible to tell how a child would
- Ignorance identified as one of the five evils intellectually develop at age 11
- WW2 required educated troops as the technological - Secondary modern schools
complexity of modern warfare increased o Based on functional ability
- Armed forced had to teach basic literacy and numeracy to o Educated the majority of lower middle-class and
recruits working-class children
o Offered innovative curricula appropriate for their intake
Butler Act, 1944 o Developed close ties with local collages so pupils could
- Made access to secondary education possible for all transfer onto vocational courses and embark on work
- Free schooling, compulsory secondary education placements
- Girls could attend secondaries o Received fewer resources and less qualified teachers
- Raised leaving age to 15 than grammar schools
- Tripartite system – grammar, secondary modern and o 75% of children went onto secondary moderns in the
technical post-war period, but in 1964, only 318 of their total
- 11+ provided opportunities intakes entered for A levels
- Millions of working-class students had free, compulsory - Technical schools
education o Based on technical ability
- Increased educational opportunities for females who were o Intended to educate the middle-class for
previously excluded from secondary education scientific/engineering careers in order to create a
- Social change in the 1960s and 1970s was partly a result of technocratic class who could help the country adapt in
the act as it enabled children to become more educated an age of high technology and nuclear power
- Left of Labour viewed the tripartite system as socially o Only few were built due to cost
decisive – grammar schools received the most resources
o Intake never exceeded 3% of secondary students
whilst secondary moderns were left underfunded with an
unsatisfactory curriculum, grammar schools only took 20-
Universities
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